Marsh ham­string in­jury hits Aus­tralia plans

AUS­TRALIA’S plans for the Test se­ries against South Africa have been up­set by a ham­string in­jury to Shaun Marsh, mak­ing him an un­likely starter for the open­ing match at the WACA Ground in Perth.

Marsh, who has a long his­tory of ham­string trou­ble, suf­fered the in­jury while bat­ting for West­ern Aus­tralia against Tas­ma­nia in a Mata­dor Cup match at North Syd­ney Oval on Satur­day.

“Shaun Marsh has sus­tained a low grade tear to his right ham­string while bat­ting against Tas­ma­nia at North Syd­ney Oval on Satur­day,” a WACA spokesman said. “Marsh will re­turn to Perth where he will un­dergo re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion with a view to be­ing avail­able for se­lec­tion for the first Test against South Africa at the WACA Ground next month.”

Be­fore the in­jury, Marsh had seemed likely to re­tain his place in the top six af­ter mak­ing a cen­tury on his re­call to the Test team in the third Test against Sri Lanka in Colombo in Au­gust.

Marsh had played in place of Joe Burns, with Us­man Khawaja mak­ing way for Moises Hen­riques. Khawaja is ex­pected to be re­called for the home Tests, and Burns may now also find him­self back in the team pend­ing Marsh’s re­cov­ery.

While Marsh opened along­side David Warner in Sri Lanka, he would have been more likely to as­sume a mid­dle-or­der role in Aus­tralia. ESNCricinfo